


Waylaid

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Challenge: sticksandsnark, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-23
Updated: 2007-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A jumper down, two friends stranded, and a quirk of happenstance that neither could have seen coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waylaid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [sticksandsnark](http://sticksandsnark.livejournal.com) challenge.

"They know where we are," Rodney told them confidently. He was on his knees in the rear of the jumper, surrounded by the debris of the cargo they had been carrying, sorting through it with deft hands. "We weren't that far behind them—relatively speaking, of course—and our last known location makes this the most likely trajectory for a crash landing. Better yet, even with the damage, the emergency transponder is still working, in one of those unexpected yet oh so welcome miracles which _occasionally_ occur in this galaxy."

He finished stacking the salvageable, useful goods into neat piles, then sat back on his haunches, as if to appraise the value of each powerbar, or the worth of the slightly scorched med kit. The look on his face made Teyla think oddly, suddenly, of her father when he was about to trade—eager, bright, head tilted to one side—and it was enough to make her smile a little, despite everything. Rodney returned it with a half-smile of his own.

"I don't think we really need to worry," he continued, standing up and coming forward to help her. "The Colonel and his platoon of highly trained search monkeys will be here for us soon enough—all we have to do is sit tight and wait it out."

  


* * *

  


On the evening of the fifth day, they had to bury the sergeant. Teyla wrapped a clean cloth around his head, letting white cotton hide the worst of his injuries, all the bright, bruised places where his face had collided with the console during the crash landing; then Rodney helped her to dig the grave and lower the body into it, swaddled in a tarpaulin they had found in the back of the jumper.

When they had smoothed the last handful of earth back in place over the grave and Rodney had placed a small makeshift marker on it that gave the man's name and rank and the date of his death, Rodney turned to her and said, "I didn't."

 

Teyla knew him well enough to wait.

After a moment's fidgeting, he said, "I didn't know him very well. Jimenez, I mean. Not at all, really. And I don't know if he was Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or, or _Jedi_—I mean, I don't know what his religion was, or if he had one at all, or if he had a family, or what he would have wanted me to say or do. And it doesn't, it's not like I believe in all that histrionic religious mumbo-jumbo? But it doesn't feel right to just leave him here, without—we were the last ones with him and I don't know, I—"

"I know, Rodney," Teyla said quietly, reaching out to take his hands in hers, feeling how they too were covered with the dark, sticky soil of this planet, and how Rodney's skin felt cool and clammy beneath it. He fell silent, and after a moment, she began to sing, one of the slow, measured songs that were meant for mourning and farewell. She could not know if Mark Jimenez would have appreciated it any more than Rodney did—she had known him only in passing before this mission, nodded at him in Atlantis' hallways and learned his name only when he was already dying—but she knew for whose comfort she was singing.

  


* * *

  


The next morning, before the sun had made it fully over the horizon, they filled their packs with as much as they could carry, and left their jumper and their dead. Rodney said they should leave because they were running out of both food and water, and because he thought he had located a possible energy source a couple of days walk away, with the Stargate maybe another few days walk beyond that. His reasoning made sense; but Teyla also knew that there was a drinkable stream not five minutes walk from the jumper, and that they had enough MREs and powerbars to last them both for at least another week, perhaps ten days if they were sparing.

She knew why he wanted to leave; there was nothing there he could repair, no way for him to make himself useful, nothing for either of them to do here but wait, and it had been six days now. Teyla had perhaps a little more faith than Rodney that the others would find them—faith in the almost inhuman stubbornness that both John and Ronon seemed to possess when it came to the members of their team, faith that Dr Weir would authorise a rescue mission as soon as Dr Zelenka tracked the jumper's emergency beacon, faith even in the subcutaneous transmitters which Dr Beckett had insisted that all of them have injected.

But Teyla also had faith in herself, and knew that there was no point waiting to be rescued when there was every chance they could do so themselves, when they were fit and healthy, and when they knew that there was a working gate within two or three weeks' walking distance, as things were measured on Earth. There was every chance that their team might track down their emergency beacon before then, yes; but there was equally every chance that this journey would speed up their return home. So she strapped on her pack and fell into step beside Rodney when he tapped at his hand-held computer and said "Hmm, south, I think."

 

The jumper had crashed just short of a mountain range—nothing as impressive or as daunting as the mountains Teyla had known in the east of Athos, but still jagged enough to make her glad that they had managed to avoid them, landing to the south just at the point where thick forest gave way to scattered tree cover and rolling grassland. The going was hilly enough to make Rodney complain about damage to his joints and pain in his back and a possible build up of fluid on his right knee, but not enough to make him truly mean any of it, and they made good time the first day.

There was no danger that either Rodney's technology or Teyla's eyes or ears could detect—no sign of large animals, let alone people or Wraith, just bird song and the sight of the occasional small herd of some kind of grazing animal in the distance. When they stopped to rest that night, the warm air meant that it was no hardship at all to sleep on a bed of the dense, springy grass, their rolled-up jackets serving as pillows.

Teyla found that she was tired in a way she had not often been since she had come to live with the Atlanteans, the loose kind of exhaustion that came with a full day's honest work, rather than the leaden weariness that weighed heavily on her so often after even brief fights against the Wraith. It was, in its own way—well, she believed that if John were here, he would say that it was "kinda nice", and when she curled up and closed her eyes, breathed out and relaxed, she was inclined to agree with him.

Next to her, she could hear Rodney fidget in an attempt to get comfortable. There was a brief moment of silence, before she heard him move again and hiss, "Oh my god, is that a blister? Do you think that's a blister? That's incredibly big for just one day's hiking, do you think it could be infected?"

"Sleep well, Rodney," Teyla said, eyes still closed, amusement threading its way through her tiredness and making her smile.

"Oh," Rodney said, after a moment's silence, "Yes. Night, Teyla." And then there was only the sound of his breathing, and they both slept.

  


* * *

  


Teyla was awake from the time the eastern horizon first began to lighten. Rodney slept on next to her while she shrugged back into her jacket, made sure everything was still stowed away neatly in her pack, and plaited her dirty hair away from her face severely. It'd been a long time since she had been able to do more than wipe away the worst of the sweat and grime with the facecloth and small towel she kept in her pack, items which Teyla had found necessary to include not long after joining John Sheppard's team; it would be good to be back on Atlantis, where she had long since ceased to regard a plentiful daily supply of hot water as a luxury.

She sat and watched the sky shade swiftly from indigo to grey to palest blue while she waited for Rodney to wake. It didn't take long for him to do so—Rodney would never be a naturally early riser, like her or like John, or possess the ability to be alert and running at a moment's notice, like Ronon, but he was no layabed.

He sat up and scrubbed at his face with his hands, thanking her when she handed over one of their remaining power bars. Teyla had never quite managed to reconcile herself to their taste—they always tasted vaguely like ash to her, unnatural and sickly sweet—but Rodney delighted in extolling their virtues to anyone who would listen. This morning, he contented himself with mumbling "Mmm, high fructose corn syrup", finishing off the bar in a couple of bites before stuffing the empty wrapper into a pocket, standing up and stretching.

If anything, it was a little warmer than it had been the day before, and the sun had not climbed very high before both of them had removed their jackets. Teyla could feel her stride lengthening out, relaxing into the easy pace of someone who had a goal to reach, but no discernible deadline to meet; it reminded her of the great hunting parties which used to convene on Athos at the New Year when she was a child, where the journey into the interior was half the point of the gathering.

Next to her, Rodney was as close to relaxed as she had seen him in some time. There was still that hint of tension in the line of his shoulders, and he still pulled his scanner out every hour or so to check that they were going in the right direction, but he mostly seemed content to walk next to her, to talk or let her talk in turn, and his grumbling about the distance and the faint headache he had now that their supplies of caffeine had run out seemed more automatic than heartfelt.

Teyla sang sometimes, the swinging, lulling rhythms that Charin had taught her were good for long trips, when the walking was easy and the road was long. Rodney joined in with her occasionally; he picked up tunes easily, and though his voice would never fill concert halls on VersÃºr, it was pleasant.

Once or twice, Rodney hummed tunes of his own. Many of them Teyla didn't recognise, some of them vaguely familiar as snatches of the long, instrumental pieces that Rodney and Radek were fond of; one song, however, was very familiar to her from John's music device, and she tilted her head curiously. "I thought you did not like the Beach Boys, Rodney?" she asked.

"This is not blackmail, of course," he said wryly, mouth twisting upwards, "but if you tell the Colonel that I really do know all the lyrics to 'Good Vibrations', I _will_ have a conversation with a certain Marine. And then I will tell Ronon about the events of a certain Tuesday. Understood?"

 

"Understood," Teyla said, and laughed.

They made good time, even with the stop they made around noon to rest and refill their canteens from a small spring, though it was still close to evening when they first saw the buildings in the distance, a small huddle of low houses, stark and white-washed against the green grass of the plain.

"I'm not picking up anything," Rodney said, digging the scanner out from his pocket, "though of course, in this galaxy, that might not mean anything, and this is really more of an energy scanner than a life signs detector. Definitely nothing Ancient about this place, whatever it is."

"I believe it is a farmstead," Teyla said, though it seemed an unusually quiet one. The Athosians, admittedly, had not been much of a farming people before the loss of Athos, and she herself had no great experience with the tending of crops or animals, didn't know the rhythms of a farming life; but Teyla could see no animals nearby, no sign of movement around the buildings. It made her uneasy.

That sense of unease only grew the nearer they got to the buildings. The grass there was close-cropped, as if it had been recently grazed on, but she could see no sign of any animals. The buildings—a long, low farmhouse and a series of sheds and outhouses which together formed a tight rectangle around a paved courtyard—were in good repair, but they all seemed to be empty.

Teyla was not surprised by this—strangers were not usually considered a blessing in these worlds, not when even the most familiar face could betray you, and Teyla knew of many families who kept a basement hiding hole into which they could retreat when someone unknown appeared—but she kept one hand within easy reach of her firearm as they stepped into that main courtyard, all the same. Rodney, more obviously nervous, had a tight grip on his Beretta.

"Hello?" she called, gesturing to Rodney with one hand to stay behind her a little, to remain quiet. "Is anyone there? We mean no harm—we are lost, and merely ask for what help you can give us."

A pause. Teyla could hear nothing, only the sound of her breathing, of Rodney's, of Rodney's feet shifting restlessly. The walls gave only her words back to her; she could not sense that there was anyone behind them, listening to her.

 

"Hello?" she called again, louder this time, though she didn't expect an answer. "Hello!" Still, nothing.

When they had stood there at least five minutes, with no sign of either a welcome or of an attack, Teyla spoke again. "I believe it has been abandoned, Rodney."

"So it would seem," Rodney said waspishly, irritability heightened by nervousness. "The pertinent question, I think, is why? Culling, the agricultural Pegasus version of Black Tuesday, war, famine—" His face shifted suddenly. "Pestilence? Some kind of plague, perhaps—do you think they're all—" He took a hurried step backwards from the building.

Teyla shook her head. "The entire farm seems deserted, and I know of no illness which would affect animals as well as people. Besides, if there were bodies within, I believe we would know by now."

"How would we—oh," Rodney said. "You mean by the smell." When Teyla nodded, he wrinkled his nose. "Oh, that is _so_ disgusting, that's just really, that's absolutely—"

"And yet, it is a fact of life, Rodney," Teyla said, just a little more curtly than she intended. Shaking her head at them both, she continued, "Follow me."

She pulled her sidearm from its holster and moved forward carefully towards what seemed to be the main door of the farmhouse proper. She tested it gently, but it was not locked, and it swung open easily under her hand. Rodney, right behind her, said "Well, this seems a little anticlimactic, I was expecting—I don't know, not _George Romero's Pegasus Galaxy Adventure_, exactly, but something."

 

There was certainly nothing immediately alarming about the place. A large, bright square room which probably served as both kitchen and living area—a hearth set into a large chimney-piece against the far wall; a table and chairs, plain and well-scrubbed and made of solid wood; cupboards on one white-washed wall, along with a sink which indicated some degree of plumbing, at least. Doors led away to both left and right. An ordinary, neat, comfortable room, such as Teyla had seen many hundreds of times before.

Something wasn't right.

"I feel uneasy about this," she said to Rodney, even as she stepped further into the room.

"It is rather reminiscent of that Genii Amish look," Rodney said as he followed her, stooping to avoid knocking his head against the low lintel of the door. He looked at her, then said, "Why do I get the bad feeling that that's not what you were talking about?"

Teyla gestured around the room with her free hand. "This place has been abandoned, but quickly—you see how nothing has been taken, no attempts at packing have been made. Everything is neat—no sign of haste or startled activity, as one might expect if there had been a culling. And," she said, moving over towards the hearth, where the flames were dying down by degrees, and a pot of what seemed to be porridge was congealing slowly, "the inhabitants must have left recently, if this is any indication."

"Could they not just be out, I don't know, ploughing fields or roping broncos or whatever else it is you do on a farm?"

"It is possible, I suppose."

"But not probable."

 

Teyla tilted her head a little, considering. "We saw no one as we approached, and the land is flat enough that we should have seen anyone who was within a kilometre or so of us. Or heard the approach of a Wraith dart, for that matter. Besides, I know of no farm where all of the occupants spend the days in the fields."

"Hmm. There always has to be someone staying behind to hold down the fort, right?" Rodney said, folding his arms.

"Yes," Teyla said, looking back at the fire, "or to burn the porridge."

  


* * *

  


They spent the next hour or so going over the house and the outbuildings, but found no hidden rooms where frightened people could hide; no sign in the quiet bedrooms of the parents, of the grandparents, of the young children who seemed to live here. _Lived here, perhaps,_ Teyla thought, watching Rodney straighten up the line of rag dolls which some child had left, drooping softly, on a window sill.

"All gone," he said quietly, looking out the window at the empty farmyard.

"So it would seem," Teyla said, before taking a breath and saying, "Yes."

 

Rodney straightened up, squared his shoulders. "So," he said, "what do we do now? It's not like we can do much for the inhabitants of the lost hamlet of the Bermuda Triangle. If we stay here in, in _Roanoke_—"

Teyla didn't understand the references, but she thought she could understand his meaning. "You're right. Without knowing what happened, there is nothing we can do,; and I do not think it would be wise to dwell on it, or to stay on here—"

"But—"

"—_but_," Teyla continued firmly, "Even if these people are... gone, there are still things we can use here. There is fresh food, running water which is more than likely drinkable, a bed for the night. We can use these things before moving on."

Rodney lifted his chin, obstinate, but still clearly tempted by the chance to get clean, to eat, to sleep on a real mattress for the first time in nearly two weeks. "And if they come back—either the owners or the, the _whatever_ that took them? What do we do then?"

 

Teyla sighed. "We explain to them why we are here, if the first, and trust to their hospitality; if the second, well, I am sure that it will make no difference whether we are here, or however far away we manage to get before full dark."

Rodney considered a moment, then shrugged, his pragmatism or maybe just his self-interest winning out once a logical decision had been reached. "Makes sense. You were saying something about food?"

  


* * *

  


Teyla located the food, hauled in wood for fuel, and coaxed the fire back up to full strength, while Rodney cooked—a division of labour which may have seemed uneven to anyone who did not know just how truly bad Teyla was at anything to do with preparing food.

It was fully dark by the time their meal was ready—some dark, chewy bread that Teyla had found in the pantry, and a kind of stew which Rodney had cobbled together—a warming blend of vegetables, something which looked like _hÃ­la_ root, and strongly spiced meat. Rodney poked at his portion for a minute before attempting a mouthful. "I'm not sure how good it will be, but it's just a form of chemistry, right? Mix things in the right proportions, cook it for the right amount of time, and presuming the food isn't spoiled and that it doesn't contain any deathly allergens, it should be edible."

"It is very good, Rodney," Teyla said after she took a bite, surprised to find that she did not have to lie. It was not, perhaps, the best meal she had ever eaten—the meat was too tough for that—but it was more than edible, and a welcome change after so many days with nothing but MREs and bland powerbars.

"Not bad at all, if I do say so myself," Rodney said eventually, chewing on the last of the bread. "Years as a grad student subsisting on the tasty goodness of ramen noodles doesn't seem to have damaged my culinary abilities, hm?" He smiled at her, so clearly pleased with his achievement, with the wad of bread tucked in his cheek making him look like an overgrown _peeka_ mouse, that Teyla couldn't help a smile in return.

Rodney didn't see the point of cleaning up after themselves, but Teyla insisted. It was only polite after all, and even if the inhabitants never returned, it felt right that Teyla and Rodney should leave their house as neat as they had found it.

There was a large copper tub next to the fireplace, which Teyla supposed was for heating water; it took some effort on their part to fill it, and to place it on a hook over the fire to heat, but the flames were high enough that they soon had a plentiful amount of boiling water. Enough to allow them to scrub all their crockery thoroughly clean—but also enough, Teyla realised once the plates had been stacked away, to allow them to strip off the layer of grime and sweat which she knew covered them both.

Suggesting it to Rodney earned her his enthusiastic agreement. He was not a naturally tidy man, or what Teyla had heard Lieutenant Cadman refer to as a 'neat freak'—a term whose consonants Teyla quite enjoyed, and she had stored the words up for later use—but Rodney valued his cleanliness as much as she did, and he helped her to place the copper tub in the middle of the floor. They had soap from their packs, there were clean linen towels in one of the cupboards, and the water was just the right temperature to feel blissful against dirty skin and tired muscles. Teyla made a quick pass over her face and neck and along and beneath her arms, shuddering a little when she saw how swiftly the cloth darkened. She was not someone who had ever objected to getting dirty or muddy, and would follow John and Ronon into ditches or slither along ravines with them without a moment's thought; unlike them, however, she strongly objected to _remaining_ in such a state.

That accomplished, she took her hair out of its plait, running her fingers through it to remove the worst of the tangles, before pulling off her top; the soap wasn't ideal for washing hair, but it was better than nothing, and perhaps it would remove the worst of the stains from her clothing.

She had succeeded in getting herself mostly clean, and was pulling her one remaining clean top from her backpack to wear while the wet one dried, before she noticed how clearly Rodney was trying not to look at her, his cheeks pink and his focus a little too obviously on removing the dirt from beneath his fingernails; it was another moment yet before she realised why, remembering how so many of those from Earth had an attitude towards the body very different from the one which she had developed being raised at close quarters with others, in the open tents favoured by the Athosians.

A year ago, perhaps, she would have said something to him, or at least tried to be... kind; with Rodney, however, she had learned that in situations such as this, when he was quiet and trying his best to rid his cheeks of colour, that it was best to pretend that nothing had happened. So she pulled on her fresh top, brushed out her hair in front of the fire and braided it once more, before she bid Rodney a good night.

There were three bedrooms in the house, two of which were furnished with large wooden beds, comfortable enough for two or more people to sleep in. Had they wished, they could have slept apart in perfect ease, in privacy and comfort for the first time since they had left Atlantis. The idea of time alone to meditate did appeal; and yet, she found herself sharing the smallest room with Rodney. Rodney curled up in the bed on the left, Teyla in the one on the right; the beds were barely large enough to accommodate them, smaller even than the ones they had back in the city, but they let them lie close.

 

"Jeannie and I used to sleep like this, in one room," Rodney said suddenly, after he had turned the oil lamp down low and climbed into his own bed; his voice was barely a whisper. "When she was still a toddler and the arguments were really bad, before the divorce. It felt, I don't know. It felt safer."

"I am glad you are here too, Rodney," Teyla said, and she found herself lulled to sleep by the sound of Rodney's breathing, steady in the darkness.

  


* * *

  


They both woke at dawn, light streaming in through the thin curtains; Rodney was even out of bed a little before her, for a wonder. It promised to be as fine a day as all the ones preceding it had been, the air warming even as they sat in the doorway and ate their breakfast, hot tea and thick chunks of slightly stale bread, slathered generously with honey. Rodney made doubly sure of their course while they did so; it would, perhaps, take them slightly longer to get to the gate than he had calculated, but they were heading in the right direction.

Afterwards, Teyla busied herself with rearranging their backpacks, making sure that the weight would still be distributed easily even with all the extra food they had taken from the farmhouse's pantry—bags of nuts and dried fruit, a kind of hard, long-lasting biscuit which the Athosians knew as _lavata_—along with some blankets and the few items of clothing Teyla had taken from a chest in the largest bedroom. There was nothing there which would be an exact fit for either of them, but there was a tunic and a soft pair of trousers which, if she belted them around her waist, would do nicely to replace her BDUs when they grew soiled again. Rodney was slightly harder to accommodate—he seemed to be much taller and broader than anyone who had lived here—but she found a light, long-sleeved shirt at the bottom of the chest which just about fit him, though it would be tight at the shoulders, and some trousers whose short legs would not be noticed when tucked into his boots.

"It is perhaps as well that you and I are here together," Teyla said with a smile as she handed the items over to Rodney, "If Ronon were looking for clothing, there would surely have been nothing to fit him."

"Yes, well," Rodney said tartly, opening his backpack to stuff the clothes inside, "No doubt it would be preferable if you had Ronon here to kill and skin a bear single-handedly before fashioning a coat from its remains, but I'm afraid my own wilderness survival skills, or, well, semi-cultivated arable land survival skills, are somewhat less than ideal, and what I do have is definitely not what you—" He stopped abruptly, pausing before looking up at her; there was a faintly awkward expression on his face, as if he thought he had given away something more than he should; the clothes were being crushed a little in his grip, the fine cloth wrinkling.

 

"Rodney," Teyla said, letting her smile grow gentle and her words grow serious, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder with one hand, "It is well that you and I are here together. I wouldn't prefer it any other way."

"Oh," Rodney said, smiling back at her; his expression a little surprised, Teyla thought, and perhaps also a little hopeful. "Well, that's, that's good?" The flush on his face lasted until they had shouldered on their backpacks once more, and headed out of the farmyard, following the faint trail in the grass which lead away and to the south.

It was, perhaps, Teyla's amusement at Rodney's embarrassment which distracted her. She didn't notice the movement in the stand of trees away to their left; the rustling of branches which proclaimed that someone was there; or the glint of sunlight on glass, which meant that someone was watching them, and waiting.

  


* * *

  


The landscape became more enclosed the further south they travelled—open grassland giving way to large meadows, to smaller fields bounded by hedges, to even smaller plots of land surrounded by wooden fences. The houses became more frequent too, farmhouses and the occasional small hamlet; it seemed that on this planet, as on so many others, the population became more concentrated the closer they got to the 'gate.

Or the population used to be, at least; the further they travelled, the more unnerved the both of them became. They found dozens of houses, brightly painted and cheerful homes; all of them stood in neatly tended fields, and all of them stood empty.

One afternoon brought them to a mill on a small river, where the waterwheel turned aimlessly, wildly, with no-one left to harness its power, bags of white flour beginning to moulder inside. They'd forded the river, bags and boots held up high over their heads, and found a large farmhouse on the other bank. It was perhaps the most prosperous home they had come across so far, with wall-hangings of Manalian silk and furniture of finely-carved _thetra_ wood; yet all it yielded up was a shivering, half-starved bitch and a litter of pups. Neither dog nor pups would let them close, though Rodney talked to them softly and sat near them in a sun-warmed part of the farmyard while his clothes dried out, tossing them bits of broken lavata and dried meat which they snapped up greedily.

 

Not once did they see another person, alive or dead.

It was so obvious that something was wrong, that though they walked on green grass under a blue sky, they were walking through a world that had died in all the ways that mattered, that Rodney didn't even mention it anymore. The signs of his tension appeared in different ways: rising stress appearing in the lines of his forehead and the set of his shoulders, in his clipped speech, in the way he walked closer to her now than he did before, his pace settling down to match her easy stride as they slowly but surely made their way through pastures and fields of high corn towards the 'gate.

They still talked, or were silent as the mood took them; Teyla now thought that she knew more of Rodney's childhood than she ever had before, of the teenage losses and the adult triumphs that he had hoarded against them. Teyla told him of her father and brother, both now gone, and even went some way towards instructing him on all the Athosian history which Rod had insisted he knew better than she did, but which Teyla cherished deep within her.

But they didn't sing to each other or with each other, not anymore; and Rodney didn't hum when he broke up chunks of _lavata_ for their evening meal, or when he knelt by a stream to rub grime from his face and the length of his arms. He was curt again, the way he was when he frightened, or hurt. Teyla knew that she too was finding it just that little bit more difficult to keep a check on the edges and corners of her anger, that her sense of purpose and direction was being blunted by their travels through an empty land, with nothing for her to do but to move forward with Rodney; it frustrated her a little, and it was to that frustration which she attributed the occasional feeling of being watched—the weight of a gaze on the back of her neck, insubstantial and chilling, like the smooth press of Wraith fingertips against her skin.

It was unsettling, the more so because whenever she looked around, she could see nothing but earth and sky, fields and trees, herself and Rodney. She hadn't thought that she was given to paranoia, to second-guessing her own perceptions so much and seeing Wraith-shadows around every corner. _If Charin were here_, she thought ruefully, _how much she would scold me._

 

One evening, she looked at Rodney over the small fire which they had built to heat some tea. There was a small furrow in his brow, reflecting the concentration—whether real or feigned—that he was putting into coaxing flames from the fragrant brush they were burning. "Do you feel at times as if there is someone out there?" Teyla asked him after a while, just as the horizon was fading to purple and grey. "As if we are being watched?"

Rodney looked at her sharply, and the line of his mouth was tight. Teyla thought that he understood what she was asking him—he was often better at reading people than she gave him credit for—but all he did was snort and say "I wish," and turned back to watching the flames.

Teyla didn't sleep easily that night, but lay on her back and looked up at the stars, wondering if she could see Atlantis from here, or Athos; wondering if somewhere in that bright wash of light, Ronon was looking back, or Elizabeth, or John, searching for them. It offered her some comfort, and none, all at once.

After that day, their pace picked up. The land sloped away gently beneath their feet, leading them down into a shallow valley that stretched away to a low, purple range of hills to the south; gravity sending them jogging gently down hills and jumping over small brooks, gravity and the insistent urge to reach the Stargate, to reach Atlantis, family, _home_.

On their seventh day of walking, with most of the valley floor behind them, they came to a temple, standing in an open field by itself, some distance away from the nearest village. It was a long, low wooden building, much as Teyla had seen on half a hundred worlds where the inhabitants still kept to the Old Rule of the Ancestors. It was neither in disrepair, nor the large and ostentatious object of pilgrimage; hundreds of prayer ribbons fluttered from the pillars surrounding it, but no more than would have been offered up by a small village over many years. Teyla would have pressed on from it to the settlement, since they could easily reach it before dark, but Rodney refused, and insisted that they would make camp where they were.

"Those houses are much more easily defensible," Teyla argued as he stomped up the steps and into the interior of the temple. "Made of stone, fewer doors to guard, with an upper floor and on a rise—how can you not see that it would be much better to spend a night there?"

Rodney snorted, deliberately turned away from her, and busied himself with unrolling their blankets. "Yes," he said, "well, maybe I just think it would be better not to spend another damned night in a house that belongs to dead people."

 

"You are being unreasonable, Rodney," she snapped in the end. Her voice was tight, and the words felt rough in her throat. She was tired. She wanted to be home; she wanted to spend the night in a comfortable bed; she wanted to see a face other than Rodney's; she needed to be that much closer to Atlantis, not to be here in an abandoned temple to Ancestors in whom she had long since lost faith. She wanted to tell Rodney that he was being foolish, to make him realise just _how_ foolish—that whatever things may be like on Earth, in Canada, in all the places made strange to her by the absence of the Wraith, there was not a house he could stay in in this galaxy that was not a home of the dead. She wanted to scream.

Instead, she clenched her hands into fists and turned to sit at the entrance to the temple, closing her eyes and attempting to find some peace within her, alternately soothed and irritated by the noises coming from within as Rodney laid out their packs, started a fire on the hearth normally reserved for flame offerings to the Ancestors, and set water to heat for washing and cooking.

She was feeling, if not truly calmer, then a little better able to cope with her anger, when Rodney came out to sit next to her. He said nothing at first, but his posture, the way he rubbed one thumb nervously back and forth against the wooden steps, let her know that he regretted his words. Teyla regretted hers, too; and yet she did not.

"I just," Rodney said in the end, "It's just so _hard_..."

"I know," Teyla said evenly, but Rodney still jerked a little at something in her tone.

"I know you know," he said quickly, almost stumbling over the words, "I know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply, but—" He paused, and swiped his tongue quickly over his bottom lip, a gesture of nervousness that reminded Teyla oddly of John. "Do you really think that someone's watching us?"

 

Teyla looked out of the building, out at the fields which were just beginning to break free from cultivation, at the tangle of summer-rich growth that was unfurling itself wildly, free of human hands. The sun was just beginning to set, flaring outward to turn the length of the horizon purple and gold, and all the world seemed peaceful, the breeze cool against her bare arms and the air still but for the distant sound of bird song. "Yes," Teyla said firmly, "Yes, I do. Though whether friend or enemy, I cannot say. I can see no immediate threat, but you should know as well as I do that that does not mean there is nothing out there."

"Oh," Rodney said. He'd pulled his hands into his lap, and was fidgeting, fingers twining around themselves, a display of nervous energy without purpose. His gaze flickered between her profile, and away to the south, beyond the village in the direction where the gate was. "Do you think they're still looking for us?" he said after a pause. "Not—whoever might be out there, but the Colonel. Ronon. Elizabeth. Radek. It's been more than two weeks, and it seems—I know it seems a little fanciful, but at times it seems as if we are the only two people left. Like we'll get back to Atlantis and it'll be just like it was at the beginning, empty."

"I am sure they are still looking for us," Teyla said, looking over at him before reaching out to touch his hand, curling her fingers around his own. "I have hope, Rodney."

"Good. That's—that's good," Rodney said, squeezing her hand and smiling back at her a little, eyes very blue in a face that was becoming tanned despite his best efforts.

"And even if we are only two, we have come this far in safety, and we are very close to the 'gate," Teyla said, forcing a measure of lightness into her tone. "Surely it is not above a few days' journey?"

"A day and a half at the most," Rodney confirmed, "maybe a little less if we don't stop to rest." He stood then, fastidiously brushing dirt from trousers that were already stained at the hem and knees. "Come on," he said, heading back into the shaded interior of the temple, "knowing our luck, I'll have left the water to heat too long and in a freak of chemistry surpassing Kavanagh's most terrifying bouts of incompetence, become the first person in the universe to burn water."

Teyla watched over her shoulder as he went back inside, watching that peculiar walk of his, how he moved with his upper body thrust forward as if to force his way through the world through sheer will. "And that would be a... bad thing?" she said, suppressing a smile, mouth twitching a little when he stopped to bat away some of the long clan prayer-ribbons, which hung down from the roof of the ceiling to brush against his shoulders.

"Yes, that would be a... oh, shut up," Rodney said.

 

They slept in front of the hearth that night, wrapped up in the heavy, slightly scratchy blankets and curled around one another: maybe a little too close for warmth in the summer air, but just close enough for comfort. Rodney slept as heavily as usual, but Teyla was restless once more, and she slept fitfully until just before dawn. She was tense when she woke, and her hand searched under the rolled up blanket which served as a pillow for the knife she kept there; she could see nothing stirring in the blue-black shadows of the temple, but still she hissed for Rodney to wake up.

"T'la?" he said groggily, before stirring; she could see the moment he came fully awake, the line of his jaw tightening. "What's it? Is—"

His eyes widened, and Teyla twisted around to see a tall figure, a shock of white hair and cruelly pointed teeth that resolved itself suddenly out of the darkness; she was on her feet in an instant, but only just in time to hear the whine of a Wraith stunner, and to feel the grey dawn light fade to blackness once more.

  


* * *

  


Teyla came to on a cold stone floor, her face pressed against a compacted mixture of straw and animal dung. She grimaced, brushing the dirt from her face; she had rarely wished so strongly for the luxury of a shower, for hot water to clean both her skin and her head. For once, however, she wasn't wholeheartedly cursing her Wraith heritage—stunners had never affected her so completely as they did others, and though she still felt a little groggy, Teyla was pushing herself away from the wall to stand on unsteady legs while Rodney was still unconscious.

He was lying on his back on the other side of the room, half on and half off a pile of dirty straw, limbs splayed wide and awkwardly as if he had been thrown there. He didn't move when she sat down next to him, but he whined high in his throat when she touched his forehead—her fingertips came away wet, dark with his blood.

It took an hour or so, Teyla reckoned by the change of light in the room, before Rodney came around; a little over another hour before he regained enough control over himself to speak and move his arms. Teyla still wouldn't let him attempt to stand; the wound on his head was not serious, but it had bled freely, and Rodney gave up on trying to fight her once he had moved his head too sharply and brought on a strong bout of nausea.

"Oh god," he said, wincing and putting his fingers up to skin that was still tacky with drying blood, "because what I really wanted was for this galaxy to give me another concussion."

 

"I do not think you are concussed, Rodney," Teyla replied softly. "The blow was not strong enough to do that—though I confess that I do not understand why they attacked you before stunning you. It makes no sense."

"Oh." Rodney reddened slightly. "I... may have tried to use your knife against one of them when I saw you get hit."

Her fingers stilled where they had been stroking through his hair. "Rodney," she chided, but gently. There was no use now in pointing out to Rodney that his actions had been incredibly foolish, even if they were well-meant; her point would be better served if and when they returned to Atlantis, when she or Ronon could take Rodney to the gym and provide him with an object lesson of how best to pick one's fights.

Once Rodney could sit up against the wall, he began to take interest in the room around them. There was nothing for him to catalogue that Teyla had not already taken notice of a dozen times over—they were in an old store-room, she thought, or perhaps more probably a stable for animals. There were rings set at intervals into the wall where a cow could be chained for milking, shallow troughs in the stone floor where feed could be placed. The place contained nothing but the two of them, straw and dirt and dust; their packs had been taken, or left behind, and their holsters were empty. The only windows in the room were small and square, far too small for anyone to crawl through, and set high up, beyond even Ronon's reach, and the walls and door were depressingly solid.

"They cannot have taken us very far," Teyla pointed out to him. "Your wound was still fresh when I woke up, so they cannot have kept us unconscious for very long. I think we're in one of the outbuildings in the village just beyond the temple."

"That would make sense," Rodney said, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. "Or at least, as much sense as any of this makes. Why would Wraith follow us for days without doing anything, and then not feed on us once they've caught us? Let alone the fact that I've never heard of a Wraith travelling on foot before; they're kind of a "my other car's a hive ship" kind of—"

"They are not Wraith," Teyla broke in, quietly.

"But." Rodney frowned at her, clearly confused. "Teyla, I saw them. Two of them, tall, white hair, in need of some serious dental work? Please don't tell me _you_ were actually concussed when you fell."

 

Teyla shook her head, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them. "No, not Wraith. Wraith I would have sensed. They are not so very different, though—these two are Wraith Worshippers, the ones who are truly devout. Even more so than the spy whom Colonel Sheppard encountered on that hive ship. They are... fanatical." She couldn't repress the shudder that ran through her at the thought of them, at how much just the mention of them repulsed her. "My father and his cousins caught one of them, once, when I was very small. They brought him back to our camp at one of the midwinter festivals to make a lesson of him before he was put to death. I don't remember all of it very clearly, but I remember—he had bleached his hair and grown it long and straight. His face..." With her fingers, she sketched out the tattoo he'd worn so proudly, the stark, seven-pointed symbol of one of the older hives burned dark into his skin. "Even his teeth, he had filed them down to sharp points."

Next to her, she could tell, Rodney had turned pale beneath blood and sunburn; she pressed on regardless, finished her story. She had to, because it was important that Rodney understand that the worst thing about that man, that _thing_, was how he had looked at them all with a smile on his face like death made flesh; how he had grinned at them until, in front of every Athosian from oldest to youngest, Tagan Emmagan had picked up his gun and shot him square through the forehead. She had to make Rodney understand the worst thing about the Worshippers, the thing that made Teyla's gut churn—the knowledge that beneath the pale hair and paler skin, beneath the tattoos, they were still human. She had to make Rodney understand that these were humans who wanted nothing more in life than to be like the Wraith, who hunted other humans down with nothing like guilt or remorse, who tore husband from wife and brought children to the Wraith to be ripped apart and eaten whole.

Whatever Rodney thought of her words, they were clearly enough to make him think; he sat without speaking for a long time, even when Teyla heard noises coming from outside. They were muffled by the thick stone walls and the wooden door, but Teyla could hear voices and footsteps, and even once or twice horses' hooves, striking against cobblestones. The voices rose and fell in a rhythm Teyla could recognise—anger? disagreement?—though she could not make out the language.

They had waited long enough for Teyla's hunger to make itself known, her stomach rumbling softly, when she heard footsteps approach; Rodney stiffened next to her, and flinched a little when the door swung open. The Worshipper who entered was tall, Teyla saw as she stood to face him; easily as tall as Ronon, if not taller, though he was broader of shoulder, built like Rodney or like Major Lorne. His face was tattooed and heavily scarred, twisted lines of tissue like burnt rope running from his face, down his neck, to disappear beneath his clothing; he carried himself like a Wraith, and bared a set of blackened, pointed teeth like one.

Teyla had to swallow hard against her hatred.

He tossed a bag at them, aiming it to land at Teyla's feet. Rodney stooped to pick it up, felt inside it warily and produced a loaf of bread, a large round of hard, orange cheese and a leather skin full of water. All the food was fresh, the bread still soft; it must have been scavenged from one of the houses the Worshippers were responsible for emptying. Teyla looked at Rodney and arched an eyebrow; he turned to sneer at the man. "Continuing on in the honourable tradition of one last meal for the condemned?" he said, "Or is it just that the Wraith like their meals fattened up beforehand. The high-calorie Atkins approach?"

The Worshipper could no more understand the sense of Rodney's words than Teyla could, but he surely understood the tone; he reached out with one massive hand and backhanded Rodney with enough force that his head snapped back, with enough force that Teyla knew there would be a vicious mark across Rodney's cheekbone in a few hours.

 

"Hold your tongue, meat," he said, words twisted and close to lisping, the sounds harsh around the blackened teeth in his mouth, "or I'll remove it for you. The Queen wants you alive, but she said nothing about intact, and I don't think your silence will ruin her play."

From the corner of her eye, Teyla saw Rodney blanch a little, but he tilted his jaw higher in the air, clenched his hands into fists and said nothing. The Worshipper sneered again, clearly taking Rodney's silence for submission, and made to leave, but he stopped in the doorway when Teyla spoke. His bulk blocked out all the light shining through the entryway. "Why does she want us alive at all?" she said. "I know your kind. You are as likely to spit people on fence posts as you are to bring them back to a hive for a Feeding, and yet you have been tracking us for days; and now you are keeping us alive. Why?"

She was not really expecting an answer, was not expecting a reason for the restless sleep of so many nights, for the iron weight she had carried in her gut; but the Worshipper reached inside his jacket and pulled out a photograph. It was creased and many times folded, but Teyla's eyes widened when she saw it. It was a copy of one of the fugitive posters which the Genii had once littered across several dozen worlds in pursuit of those with the Ancestors' gene, Rodney's face and name in stark black and white across the page.

"How did you—" Rodney said, clearly startled. "You're working for the _Genii_?"

The Worshipper snorted. "I was told you were not a fool, McKay. The photograph is just an aid; it doesn't matter to me if it's Genii or Lantean, once it helps me find you and bring you to my queen alive. Such a lucky coincidence that we found you here—you're responsible for the death of one of the lady's clutchmates, and all her clutchmate's hive. She wants to make sure you die slowly for that, McKay, torn apart with her claws before she deigns to take your life."

Rodney flinched, glanced over at Teyla and swallowed roughly before speaking; his voice was high and reedy. "Well, that's, if, if it's me you're looking for, you can let my, my friend here go, right?" He tried for a smile; it looked wrong on his face, forced and sickly. "She's not listed there, your queen doesn't want her, and I promise I'll go quietly, really quietly if you just—"

"_Rodney_," Teyla said, horrified, reaching out to clutch at his wrist, "No."

 

"Noble," the Worshipper said, though the tone of his voice implied that he didn't find it so at all, "and weak, and pointless. We may not have a picture, but we know who the Emmagan bitch is. Don't think my queen will be any less pleased at the chance to take her apart, McKay. Maybe you'll even have the honour of watching her feed."

The Worshipper bared his teeth again, his face like the ruin of a smile, and closed the door solidly behind him. Teyla heard a bar slide home outside, with a heavy, final sound, and Rodney slumped down to sit on the floor.

They waited until the Worshipper's footsteps died away; then, after a brief consultation and some warning from Rodney about the state of his vertebrae, he boosted her up onto his shoulders so that she could peer from each of the four small, high windows in turn. The angle was awkward, and she could see as much of the clear blue sky outside as she could of the buildings and the ground, even when she craned her neck—but she was able to describe a square, cobbled courtyard to Rodney; two Wraith Worshippers who stood in conversation, gesturing about something, at the archway which led outside; three horses, skittish and dancing a little, who stood in the centre of the yard.

"I do not think there can be more than two of them," Teyla said, as Rodney lowered her carefully back to the floor. "There are three horses, but only two of them are saddled. The other one carries something like a large rectangular box strapped to its back."

Rodney tilted his head. "Supplies?"

Teyla shook her head; the box had looked more like something of Wraith manufacture, organic yet lifeless at the same time. She sketched it out with her hands, dimension and description, until Rodney snapped his fingers at her and said "Wait, wait, of course," mouth falling open in realisation. "That's it, what else could it be?"

"I do not understand," Teyla said, but Rodney was already speaking over her.

"Think about it—Wraith technology, on a planet where everyone seems to have vanished instantaneously and without a trace. Wraith technology that's being used by two nutjobs who belong to a sect which thinks it's a great honour to serve people up as three-course meals to the Wraith—"

 

Teyla understood, suddenly, brow smoothing out even as her jaw dropped open in horror. "It is a portable version of the culling beam from a Wraith dart," she said. "You mean that all those homes we passed through—those people are all contained within, waiting for death at the hands of the Wraith?"

"Efficient," Rodney said, mouth twisting, "if rather horrifying. Hundreds of unsuspecting victims brought as tribute to a Wraith queen who doesn't have to put herself in any danger at all, by religious fanatics who manage to get their jollies at the same time."

"Rodney," Teyla said, "We have to free them, we have to." Hundreds, she thought, _hundreds_—grief and anger raw in her throat at the thoughts of all the houses they'd passed, the half-finished meals sitting on tables and work boots left abandoned at empty doorways, the children's toys strewn around the summer gardens that were quickly going to seed. So many lives cut off without warning.

"Of course," he said, "of course." He leaned against the rough-hewn stone wall and folded his arms, looking up at the ceiling as if he could find an answer there, or maybe even as if he were wishing for John and Ronon to turn up out of nowhere, just in time as always, with a puddlejumper and matching grins and the ability to free them. "What do you want to do?" Rodney said.

  


* * *

  


Neither of the Worshippers came anywhere near them for the rest of the day. They seemed to be waiting for something, but Teyla had no idea what. Towards evening, though, they heard footsteps in the farmyard once more, heavy boots on stone, sharp words and the quick, jittery ring of hooves against cobbles as the Worshippers tightened saddles and adjusted stirrups.

"They will be here for us soon," Teyla said, stretching out her limbs and slowing her breathing in preparation. "Are you ready?"

"Yes," Rodney said, breathing out heavily, in an awkward version of the relaxation exercises she had shown him before, "yeah, I think I am. I'm just, you know—physical stuff. Makes me..." He waved a hand and flashed her a quick smile, one that was watery enough to make her step forward and place a hand on his arm. She reached up with the other and pulled his forehead down to hers in a quick embrace, trusting that Rodney would understand all the meaning—eyes closed and palms open, breath mingling and bodies touching—that this gesture had ever had for her people.

 

But Teyla had barely time to exhale and centre herself before Rodney shivered against her, said "Oh, screw it," and bent down to kiss her. It was heated and gentle, and it took Teyla completely by surprise—she had not been expecting—this was, Rodney, _oh_—but her eyes had barely opened in shock before they fluttered closed again, fingers curling tentatively around his wrist in response to his certainty, the press of his lips against hers, warm and dry and curving upwards in a smile that graced his mouth in spite of everything, in spite of it all.

She had just begun to kiss him back, to match the strength and warmth of his body with her own, when she heard the sound of the bar being pulled away from the door, and they sprang apart. Teyla was breathing as hard as Rodney was, a curious mixture of adrenaline and fear and something else flaring copper-bright in her blood and burning hot in her cheeks. If the Worshipper noticed something, he didn't remark on it, or on the way Rodney trailed the tips of two fingertips against the inside of her wrist for just an instant before they parted; he didn't seem to notice much at all, just grunted at them and gestured at them with his stunner until they made their way out into the twilight, over towards the horses which now stood ready and in full tack.

His companion—a thin man who, despite the warmth of the weather, wore the same high-necked, heavy leather clothing that the Wraith favoured—was busy at the largest horse, fussing with the device which held all those who had been culled. Teyla could see his long fingers running over its surface, as if to check for flaws.

"Hellekwin," the one behind them called, "don't tell me the damned thing still isn't working?"

The thin one—Hellekwin—snorted, half in dismissal and half in concentration. "Just let me reconnect the last conductor, Arawn, and it will be ready for them."

_Now_, Teyla thought, hoping that Rodney would be ready, and pulling her hand free from the pocket of her tunic, she flicked away the stones she had salvaged from the outhouse floor, aiming them to sting against the rump of the most skittish of the two saddled horses. It reared a little, just as she had hoped, nostrils flaring and shrieking in panic, before bolting out of the farmyard. Its companion, though not hurt, scented its panic and did likewise, though it headed in the opposite direction, running for Teyla and Arawn behind her.

He dived to the left, she to the right. Teyla felt the impact of a hoof landing just the barest amount to the left of one of her hands, felt the thud and crunch of bone splintering as Arawn was too slow, too slow; she rolled free, and in the split instant of confusion while they were on the ground, divided by thundering hooves, and Hellekwin was looking up from his work as if not knowing whether to pursue either fleeing horse, or neither, Rodney dived forward. He pulled out the knife which hung at Hellekwin's waist and slid it home between his ribs. Teyla pushed herself to her feet and saw Rodney stab once, twice, the movement made jerky by the thick leather of the Worshipper's coat, before he shouted "Teyla!" and threw the knife to her.

 

She caught it and whirled around to see Arawn struggling to rise. His right arm was twisted and broken, limp, but he was tugging a gun from his belt with his left hand, cocking it as he pulled it free, and Teyla had no time to even aim, just pulled her hand back and breathed in and let the knife fly free, exhaling as it buried itself to the hilt in Arawn's eye.

Teyla heard him make one noise, awful and wet, before he toppled forward to the ground and was still; behind her, there was a bubbling, rasping sound, like someone struggling to breath through blood, and then there was only silence. It was over so quickly, she thought, her mind slowed and all the blood in her body racing; the Worshippers looked like Wraith, but they still died like men, in pain, and the stink of fear-sweat. They died like men, and they died so very quickly.  


* * *

  
Later, Teyla would be ashamed of how long it took them to set about the task of restoring the Worshippers' victims from the device, how at the time it had almost seemed more important that she turn to Rodney first and hug him as fiercely as he hugged her, to bury her face against his chest while he pressed kisses against her hair and her temple, wrapped his arms around her, and said "Teyla, thank god, oh, thank god."

At the time, though, it seemed like nothing at all; as if no time were passing at all at the same time that everything was moving quickly, too quickly; as if Rodney had never worked more swiftly than he had when he pulled the culling device from the horse's back and sat down cross-legged in the middle of the courtyard to reconfigure the device, repair the damage caused by clumsy use and days of transport across open countryside on horseback. "Hairline fracture," Rodney said, the smile on his face as he looked at her perhaps only mostly due to his sense of achievement, "but it's just the casing, I don't think it's affected the workings. I think I can get them all back."

It was necessary, she thought, many days later on Atlantis, back in her own bed with Rodney sleeping soundly beside her, one big hand warm on her hip. She thought it necessary even at the time, sitting with her arms resting on her bent knees, drinking from a flask of water and watching Rodney work; necessary that they take the time to do this slowly, to do this right. To restore this world before they left it, to see things through before they went home together; to lace their fingers together and place them on the device, to grin at one another and say "Now? Now," to watch as an entire people came back to life, shouting and crying and laughing, children screaming and grown men holding their arms up to the sky, to watch hundreds and hundreds stumble and stand tall and step forward, into the light of the late summer sun.


End file.
